Summary:
In which a happy new year is wished; a bit more holiday is taken; new map-icons are added; an old map-icon is reworked; the addition of objects to the world sees internal changes; tab-buttons are polished; and the player-character can now die.
Greetings and salutations!
This week's screenshot shows some new map-icons, as well as a bit of additional polish to the related menu-tabs:
First of all, happy new year! ^_^
As you may recall, I took the week before last as my Christmas holiday. Well, that proved unexpectedly hectic and tired, so I decided to take the first two days of last week off, too. As a result, it was a little short as work-weeks go!
Still, a few things did get done:
To start with, and as shown above, the game's maps now include some additional icons.
Specifically: There are now icons for artefacts, health-crystals, "runes of power", and quest-items. (The first three of which are shown in the aforementioned screenshot.) Further, bosses may now have individual icons, and I have one such for the previously-shown boss-encounter. And finally, I've reworked the icon that indicates an exit.
(I haven't yet decided on whether I want to include a map-icon for ship-skins.)
This did incur some changes to the way that I handle the addition of characters and items to the world--but the new approach is, I think, an improvement.
Remaining with visual elements, in the week just past I added a little further polish to the tab-buttons used in the game's status-screen and options-menu--specifically, the current tab is now indicated by virtue of being highlighted.
But perhaps most dramatically, the player-character can now die.
You see, previously, the player-character could take damage, and indicate a low-health state, and even run out of health.
It's just that nothing actually
happened when they so ran out of health.
So, in the week just past, I rectified that. >:D
ahem
Now, when the player-character runs out of health, the player loses control (and indeed the targetting cursor, too), and a short series of "death effects" takes place. Finally, a "death menu" is shown, offering the ability to reload a save, return to the main menu, or quit the game. (Although the "load" option currently just goes to the main menu, as saving and loading have yet to be implemented.)
(And for testing purposes, I also implemented a simple debugging-key that re-instates the prior invincibility, and one that deals damage. The latter is being used in the gif shown above.)
And finally, there were various tweaks, fixes, and changes made that don't seem worth detailing: a little bit of writing, some cleanup-on-destruction code, some design-doc work, and so on.
That, then, is all for this week--stay well, and thank you for reading! ^_^
